Search This Blog

These posts come from visits to reservations and urban-Indian communities. Look for my book, "American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle for Self-Determination and Inclusion," coming In spring 2018.

Posts

This article appeared on the Huffington Post in August 2013.
South Dakota has devised an
ingenious new way to curb minority voting. For decades, suppression here has
involved activities that won’t surprise those who follow enfranchisement
issues: last-minute changes to Indian-reservation polling places, asking Native
voters for ID that isn’t required, confronting them in precinct parking lots
and tailing them from the polls and recording their license-plate numbers. The
state and jurisdictions within it have fought and lost some 20 Native
voting-rights lawsuits. Two South Dakota counties were subject to U.S.
Department of Justice oversight until June of this year.
That’s when the Supreme
Court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, saying, “Today,
our Nation has changed.”
Yes, it has. The VRA decision
provided the opening for those who are uncomfortable when minorities, the poor
and other marginalized citizens vote. Since the decision, new measures to limit
enfranc…

This article first appeared in Indian Country Today in August 2013. Plaintiffs and defendants both
claimed victory on August 6, when U.S. District Court Judge Karen Schreier
dismissed the Native voting-rights lawsuit Brooks
v. Gant. Oglala Sioux Tribe members had sued South Dakota state and county
officials, seeking a satellite early-voting and registration office that would
give them elections in their own county and equal to those other South Dakotans
enjoy. Once the lawsuit got
underway, the state and county defendants promised to use federal Help America
Vote Act (HAVA) money to give the 25 plaintiffs what they wanted through 2018. According
to Judge Schreier, this meant the plaintiffs could no longer show the required
“immediate injury,” so she dismissed their claim. However, she noted, her
decision was “without prejudice,” meaning that, if necessary, the plaintiffs
can sue again. “They caved,” said OJ
Semans, Rosebud Sioux civil rights leader and co-director of voting-advocacy
gr…

Originally published in Indian Country Today in June 2013. For more on the effects of the decision in South Dakota, go here.“We’re still paying
for defeating Custer!” exclaimed OJ Semans, Sicangu Lakota co-director of the voting-rights
group Four Directions. He was laughing, but described himself as entirely
serious in noting that 137 years to the day after Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
and his forces were wiped out, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an important section of the Voting Rights Act, which protects
minority voters.

Congress passed the VRA in 1965 and reauthorized it with nearly
unanimous support in 2006. The portion the Supreme Court invalidated
was Section 4, which provided the formula by which states or local
governments with a history of discrimination were covered by Section 5’s “preclearance”
procedures. When planning new voting laws or practices, covered jurisdictions had
to run them by the Department of Justice or the courts for advance approval.

Originally published in two installments in Indian Country Today in July 2013.

Crow Creek Sioux Tribe chairman Brandon Sazue is willing to
drive an hour across the rolling central South Dakota grasslands that separate
his reservation from Pierre, the state capital, in order to buy sneakers for
his kids. He has declared a personal economic boycott of Chamberlain, the reservation
border town that’s a half-hour closer.

Chamberlain is where he and other tribal
members have long shopped and done business. However, its high school wouldn’t
allow a Sioux honor song to be performed during its recent late-May graduation—in
spite of a Native enrollment of about one-third of the student body and despite
a staff and student petition requesting it. The song was eventually presented,
but outdoors across the street rather than inside at the ceremony.

The tall, strapping chairman is still fuming. “Their refusal
is ringing in my ears,” Sazue said. Never one to shy away from controversy, in 2009 he cam…

Originally published in Indian Country Today in July 2013. “Inbuilding homes for
tribal members, our students will learn computer-design and building skills, how
to bid on a job and more,” said Oren Voice, wood-shop teacher at the Crow Creek
Sioux Reservation’s high school, in Stephan, South Dakota. “It’ll give them a
good technical education and help them prepare for careers.”
Under the supervision of
Voice, who is a tribal member (shown at left below), and a team of three additional faculty members,
a crew of 11 students began building a home on the reservation on Tuesday, June
4. By Thursday, the students (shown above) had the subfloor in place and had framed two
walls, using conventional balloon construction. “We’re ahead of schedule and
should have no problem finishing the entire home, kitchen cabinetry and all, by
November,” said Voice. “Then a family can move in.” The dwellings will
help the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe chip away at not just unemployment among tribal
members, but also…

Originally published in Indian Country Today in June 2013.“I want to develop my breakfast-burrito business into
a restaurant,” said Lisa Lengkeek, a member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe and
2013 winner of the South Dakota Indian Business Alliance contest for best
business plan of the year (shown below left, with a customer). “I make the burritos at home and deliver them to a
lot of customers, who I’m sure would patronize the restaurant.”
However, to open an eatery on the Crow Creek
reservation, Lengkeek would have to start from the ground up, she said. She
meant that literally: “There is no commercial space here—not one building I can
rent. I would have to scrape the ground, pour cement, buy lumber, start
hammering…”
Other entrepreneurs on the Crow Creek reservation are
in the same position, whether they contemplate starting or expanding a company,
she said. “My sister-in-law wants to open a florist’s shop, my daughter would
like to sell scoops of ice cream, along with homemade jams,…

“I want to saturate Pine Ridge with healthy
vegetables,” said Steve Hernandez, Oglala Sioux Tribe gardening instructor.
“The interest in gardening here is huge, and education is key. Through classes
in everything from soil preparation to preserving the harvest, we ensure that
our people are learning do this for themselves.”

For
Oglalas, eating fresh, organic produce will mean better health. It’s a declaration
of sovereignty, according to Hernandez, a tribal member and a former educator
for South Dakota State University’s extension service. And it’s starkly practical
as well, he said: “Most of our food is trucked in. If there’s bad weather—common
on the Plains—it doesn’t get through.”

Working
out of Oglala Vice President Tom Poor Bear’s office, Hernandez facilitates
collaboration among a huge network of groups and individuals who spent the
month of May tilling, planting and laying out drip irrigation lines throughout
the reservati…

I am a long-time writer on human rights and culture, with a focus on Native American issues. Recognition for my articles includes the Richard LaCourse Award for Investigative Reporting from the Native American Journalists Association, of which I am an associate (non-Native) member, and numerous other grants and awards from major journalism organizations. I am a contributing writer for publications covering politics and the arts. During two decades in magazines, I was an editor at national consumer magazines.